Welcome to OOG, the place where I can ramble about my adventures on Guam, life as a mom, and my love for Korean pop culture. Thanks for visiting!

Thursday, November 16, 2006

My New Hobby

My drama addiction has reached another level. Ironically, I’m spending less and less time watching dramas too! First dramas helped me fall in love with Korean culture and bring it alive for me. Then, I became obsessed with studying Korean. For the past year, I’ve regularly been attending Korean school. Many evenings, I will study rather than watch the dramas. Next I started this blog about k-dramas. Now, recently I joined a fan-subbing group. For the past year and a half, I’ve been in awe of the great work that the fan-subbers do at http://www.d-addicts.com/ to allow English-speaking drama fans to watch Korean shows. Most of the dramas I watch these days are from d-addicts with fan subs. I was particularly grateful when the fan sub group D-Fansubs was formed to sub the drama Ju Mong. Ju Mong is a 60 episode historical drama, and I knew this would be a big task for any group. However, it was a drama I really wanted to see. Sure enough, D-Fansubs was up to such a large project and has now released subs through episode 20.

Wanting to help out, I contacted D-Fansubs about becoming an editor. I was hired! LOL However, with Ju Mong, they are now getting the translation from MBC, so they really didn’t need editors, only people that could "time" the subs to the video or do quality control (i.e clean up the subs if needed and double-check the timing). For these jobs, I needed to understand how to use timing software. So, I’ve spent the past week learning how to time. I started by editing some existing sub files that I had, then last night, with the hubby out of town and an evening to spare, I stripped all the timing out of an existing Ju Mong sub file and retimed episode 16 of JuMong…well 10 minutes of it anyway. It took me about 2 hours to time 10 minutes of a drama! I had always heard that timing subs is well...time consuming! Actually, it is quite addictive, especially for a Korean language fan like me. I can’t come close to translating the dialog, but I soon realized that I all my Korean study was very helpful in matching the right sub with the right dialog. There was almost always a transition word, clause, phrase, etc. that stood out when I was applying the sub. I think this new found hobby is going to really help me with my Korean listening skills, which need tons of work!

I’m signed up as QC person on 2 episodes of Ju Mong. If all goes well, I’m going to try timing next! Who knows when I’ll have time to actually watch a drama again!!

7 Comments:

Holy moly you are Super Woman! I am so impressed by all that you do. In your last life you were Korean :) Ok I don't believe in reincarnation etc because we're Christian but I swear a Korean angel must have brought you down to earth. My angel must have been French because I'm a francophile whatever that means haha..

Don't miss out on too many dramas because I look forward to your posts on our K-board. Have a great week-end! oops it already started for you in Guam.

I'm probably pretty crazy for doing this!! But I will give it a shot. Like I said I want to help. I did see two episodes of Pure at Heart the other night. Plus, DH gets back in town tomorrow and d-fans is getting ready to release 6 eps of Ju Mong! DH will be pleased!!

Hello I came across your blog while searching for Korean schools here on Guam. My question is, what Korean language school did you attend? I have never seen/encountered one yet here on Guam and I'd really love to learn. Thank You.

So fun to get your comment. My poor abandoned blog! I did study on Guam. Christine at Christine's Language School taught me (she teaches English to Koreans) and also I studied at Onnuri Church. They were awesome. Good luck!

Ahhh I see. Hopefully I find a learning center that teaches Korean because I've been learning online but I feel as if I need an instructor.Hmmm I'll try contacting her and see what happens. Thank you again ^_^